quinta-feira, 23 de abril de 2009

Pre-Order either of the upcoming releases, Abnormally Attracted To Sin or Abnormally Attracted To Sin: Deluxe Edition, by Tori Amos and get a limited* autographed CD Booklet with purchase!

About Tori Amos:

On May 19th, 2009, Abnormally Attracted To Sin, the tenth Tori Amos studio album, will be released on Universal Republic. Amos describes Abnormally Attracted To Sin as "really handmade. I wanted to make a treasure, something people will value."

Like all of Tori's albums since Boys For Pele, Abnormally Attracted... was recorded at Martian Studios in Cornwall, England by Tori's husband Mark Hawley and his partner Marcel van Limbeek. The center of the album is Amos's voice, and her Bosendorfer piano, locking in with her touring and recording band of the past five years: guitarist Mac Aladdin, bassist Jon Evans and her longtime drummer and rhythmic foil, Matt Chamberlain.

One of the most valuable parts of Abnormally Attracted To Sin is the bonus DVD, an element that is often a lame attempt to jack up the sticker price in other instances. Not this time. The DVD contains sixteen "visualettes" directed by Christian Lamb, who filmed Amos and her band during the American Doll Posse tour. "Christian jumped on the bus and made daily montages of the band's life on the road, using music from the live shows as a soundtrack to the footage," Tori said. "When I saw what he had done, the new songs started to come to me." The visualettes are not videos in the traditional sense - there is no lip-syncing. Amos thinks of them as "silent movies," citing early movie star Mary Pickford as a reference point.

Some of Tori's characters from American Doll Posse appear in footage Lamb shot over the past year and a half. Some visualettes are interspersed with live footage from the tour, while others were filmed to work with the songs that would come to her later. Rather than literal visual representations of lyrics, Lamb's images are complicated and integral to the logic of Abnormally Attracted To Sin.

"Abnormally Attracted... is made up songs I wrote on the road watching Christian's footage, and the songs I wrote after spending some time in California, which is where I had lived before Little Earthquakes was released," Amos explained. The album title is a line from Guys and Dolls, originally spoken by the character Sarah Brown. The phrase came to Tori before she recorded with the band, but after she had written the songs. Sin, in this case, is not necessarily what you're thinking of.

"I wanted to really investigate how we're controlled by the threat of despair," Amos said. "I wanted to look at power - how we think and how you can reclaim the right to think for yourself, to uncover what you believe in as a spiritual, sexual creature. You don't need the approval of your family, or of their religion. You can think, 'Wait a minute, I'm a spiritual being. Just because I like gold handcuffs doesnâ€™t mean I'm not a spiritual being. These definitions are not for my mother to make about me.' What I am exploring with this record is power, and giving it away with your thinking. How do we become controlled?"

"I'm a minister's daughter. The power of the church is insidious, and it permeates everything," Amos explained. "A lot of what the Church discusses is not about the compassionate path of Christ, it's about what kind of lifestyle is acceptable and approved of by the Church when god knows what they're doing behind closed doors. You have a lot of people waking up every morning who feel paralyzed to act because of these judgments. All around us people are not only experiencing physical bondage but emotional and mental bondage behind perfectly groomed lawns. Inside acceptable addresses the definition of bondage is perversely explored with those we know only too well. Moving from the personal to the political, 'Strong Black Vine' investigates the effect of religious intolerance, another form of bondage."

The mood for much of Abnormally Attracted To Sin is dark but charged, like a late night conversation (or confession) held over several bottles of wine. The album doesn't take the regression lightly, and fights back as hard as Amos has ever fought. The title track moves over an impressively thick synthesizer line Amos wrote and played, feeling a bit like club music that's wandered out into a dark side street to think for a moment. "People are being forced to question what they believe in," Amos said. "We're being brought back to questions which make up our foundation: 'Who am I? What do I really believe in?'"

Abnormally Attracted To Sin is the work of someone who knows, with a fierce certainty, what she believes in. Anybody, whether itâ€™s a newcomer or a lifelong member of Tori's phenomenal fanbase, will feel that certainty. "Passion is a seducer, and this music is passionate. Even though somebody might be drinking beer, if they see the color of that red wine, it looks like blood, it looks so delicious - they might just have to taste it. I'm good old red wine. By letting myself age I think I'm better for drinking beginning in 2009."

*Offer valid only with purchase of Abnormally Attracted or Abnormally Attracted: Deluxe Edition. This special offer is valid for both domestic and international orders. Pre-ordered CDs shipping with promotional material are limited to (5) per customer. Booklets will be available while supplies last, newburycomics.com will post information when autographed booklets are sold out.